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This is our van two days ago......drove over the railway crossing at Edith Falls Road (NT) at about 40kph and bang.....

Now waiting for parts to arrive in Katherine.

$550 to flat top back to Katherine and about $600 to fix it.....plus..plus....still waiting final price....

Oh bugger!!
Can you tell us in a little more detail what exactly failed? A bit hard to see in the photo.

U-bolts snapped in the axle/spring connections!

Van has only done 20,000k on black top or a bit of formed dirt such as rest areas or a few k on graded dirt roads to camp sites in National parks. Toyota puling it has done 220,000k and a lot of that was very rough 4WD work - such as Palm Valley a few weeks ago (no van - tenting it) and never broken a U-bolt. The van was sold to me as an off-road van....maybe they meant the driveway????

Impact damage. Insurance claim. Been a ray of sunshine that van! Hope the next breaks are more positive for you

Those U bolts are way too long. What happened to all the lock nuts as well.
Has the suspension been worked on before and maybe had the spacers removed from between the stub and the spring. May be good to change all of them.

Bloody hell Peter you sure love those Chinamen don't you? A lottery ticket may bring you better luck.

He is a Paul, not a Peter Dottie Gee's ypou sure are rough on that van Paul, don't you know it's an off road van, it's meant to be off the road and in a back yard some where so it can't get hurt, not to be bashed around the countryside over railways crossings and driveways and other torturous terrain.
Now, if you hadn't had that draw bar strengthen and the mounts fitted as they should have been, this may not have happened, it may have snapped off and gone bush instead

I can't see that it would be impact damage as the other U bolt ends show no sign of damage. They are nyloc nuts so lock nuts are not required. There is a possibility the U bolts have been reused, that shear seems to be at the end of the threaded section and this is one of the weak pionts in U bolts with cut threads rather than rolled threads. It could also be the U bolt ran out of thread and the nut ound up on the shaft section of the U bolt resulting in the torque applied twisting the tread to fracture point rather than increasing the clamping effort.
Unfortunately snaped U bolts are a part of life, one of those things that happen when you have leaf springs and no shock absorbers. I suggest while it's in getting that U bolt replaced that all the U bolts and spring centre bolts are done at the same time rather than progressively as you travel from town to town. If one has failed the others have been under basically the same level of stress.

This is how that suspension is supposed to look.
Note the red packing makes the U bolts extend a lot less through the plate and it has lock nuts.
Maybe the packers have been removed to give a bit more ground clearance.

Bobrovin wrote:This is how that suspension is supposed to look.
Note the red packing makes the U bolts extend a lot less through the plate and it has lock nuts.
Maybe the packers have been removed to give a bit more ground clearance.

Who knows what the manufacturer did! He even installed the tunnel boot lids upside down in error!